Personal Profile

After earning a BSc in Computation from UMIST and an MSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Essex, Simon spent more than a decade working in business IT systems, contributing to projects for organisations including Nestlé and Linklaters.

Motivated by a longstanding interest in philosophy, religion, myth, and fantasy, he subsequently left the IT sector to pursue studies in theology and philosophy at Heythrop College (a college within the University of London, known for its modern Catholic and interfaith ethos), followed by an MA in Jewish Studies, and then a PhD in Religions and Theology, at the University of Manchester. He is now the chief administrator at the European Association for Jewish Studies, and an independent scholar with a general interest in religion and philosophy, and a particular research interest in the history, origins and impact of grim stereotypes and dark myths in modern religious thought and culture.

His PhD, which was funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant, examined how Jews were stereotyped and mythicized in a variety of English Catholic discourses during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is currently preparing a book based on an extension of this research.

His academic research since completing the PhD has explored themes related to religious discourse, mythmaking and cultural stereotyping, including:

1. An examination of Jewish stereotypes in the literature and journalism of the English author Gilbert Keith Chesterton. The results of this study can be found in a short book: Chesterton’s Jews.

2. An examination of anti-Judaism and anti-Catholicism in the bible commentaries and sermons of Adam Clarke (1762-1832), a prominent Methodist preacher and bible scholar from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This project was funded by a seed corn fellowship from the John Rylands Research Institute. An article based on this research into Adam Clarke’s discourse was published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library [link to journal volume] [link to author accepted manuscript]

3. Transcribing and summarising life story interviews as a volunteer for the “Rainbow Jews” Anglo-Jewish oral history project.

4. An examination of the life and protean discourse of the esotericist author, journalist and Freemason Dudley Wright.